OK, I’ll admit it, Straight out. I hate using the F word, but basically, I… I… I failed a bit.
There, I’ve said it.
Buoyed by the success of my other sporting reforms, I thought I could easily sort out Cricket quick smart, pronto.
So, when the ACB came calling and asked me to have a go at reforming the game I threw my daggy green in the air and hollered, “Are rockets pointy at the top? Do snakes have hips? Is Bradman deader than a dodo? Of course, I will!” and padded up.
Hubris. Not Hubris Younis, Waqar Younis’s less cricketty cousin. Hubris, as in being too up yourself. Yep, hubris bit me on my uppity buttock, and the ACB rejected every golden reform I’d suggested. Why? I can’t account for it. After all, the reforms were elegantly simple:
Hit and run.
Gets out goes in.
Hit to the boundary is six and out
No LBW
One-handed catch off the pavilion roof is out
No ball rubbing
Sack Wisden
What’s not to like?
I think basically I couldn’t get on Cricket’s wavelength, and they couldn’t get on mine. In the end we agreed to differ, and I refunded their fat cheque (after legitimate expenses).
No, people are different. There’s more than one way to cook a chook, and different sports appeal to different personality types.
Some sports fans like to get their thrills slowly and are content to watch nothing happen for extended periods, Cricket being a prime example.
Then there’s SoccerFootWorldGame or whatever, where lots of little things happen all the time, but the important bits only happen once or twice in the match.
Basketball appeals to lovers of event overload. They dig seeing the same thing happening two hundred times in a match. Netball fans like something similar, but with more regimentation and less movement.
Short attention span? No problem. Try the 100 metre sprint. Or the 100 metre hurdles. But wait. Hurdles is only for people with no respect for their groin. If you don’t consider your groin you’d probably be better off being a nun or priest.
By the way, it occurred to me the other day. A sports hack, if you will. How can you up the exercise rate and improve the health of the nation overnight? Simple: invert the dominant paradigm (turn the tables). Make the crowd the players and the players the crowd.
Think about it. Instead of two thousand people sitting around watching two boxers go biffo, get the two boxers sitting around enjoying the fistic feast of two thousand people going biffo.
Rugby? Thirty players sit on the halfway line. After the anthems, Welcome to Country and Haka, some legend or toff kicks a ball into the stands and thirty thousand fans chase the ball, pass it, kick it, grapple about and periodically shove a head between the buttocks. Rare fun, and damned good exercise.
Yes, I know the idea needs refinement, and I’ll get onto it, but mainly I wanted to demonstrate that I can come back from my cricket failure. I’m an ideas man, and I’ve got plenty of light bulbs left, don’t you worry.
Which brings me to Vigoro. What a great name. Vigoro. And what a great game. Ah, the memories. Smarting from the lost hours standing around on a cricket field in the murdering sun waiting for the bat hogs to stop blocking and start running, I despaired of ever playing meaningful summer sport in primary school.
Then one Wednesday after lunch the teacher dragged out a massive kit bag and unbuckled it to reveal these hulking … bat things. Several of us piddled with excitement.
The bat things looked like a cross between your medieval war club and a 19th Century carpet beater. Their fearsome black faces were studded like a dungeon door, and there was a good metre of handle for hefting with. These weapons bellowed “Whack something!” like Donald Trump bellows, “Lies! I never touched her!”
What is it, Sir?
This, children, is Vigoro!
Well, that afternoon was one fat heaven of just whacking balls, flogging balls, slogging balls and running every time. Girls, boys, underarm, overarm, what larks! Although nominally similar to Cricket it was so much more fun, more egalitarian and just more Vigoro!
Anyhow, Vigoro Australia approached me. They said they’d heard about the Cricket “unfortunateness” but they remained confident I was the person to Give Vigoro a nip and tuck, a cut and shut, a lick of paint, fresh legs and a 21st Century ‘tude.
What did I say?
Are you kidding? I said, “You’re on, Vigsters, and I’ve already got the motto,
Vigoro: Just whack it!”
A lesson to us all
Bullgoose
and then